A story to unite all fans

AT the last stop before Wembley, the team bus was parked next to some rubbish bins, the pitch was sticky with mud and the burger stand at one end was so close to the pitch the players could smell frying onions when they took corners.

There was no giant arch overlooking the thwarted efforts of Bradford City at AFC Wimbledon on Saturday. Only the huge, bare trees which dominate the skyline behind one stand because it is so small, the supporters are only four deep.

Everyone knows run-of-the-mill life for City is much more about visiting places like the Cherry Red Records stadium than it is heading to big cup finals like the one they face on Sunday.

Few places, however, could have made the point more graphically than the extremely compact, hemmed-in home of the Dons, which is shared with non-league Kingstonian and where last weekend, the pitch maintenance equipment had broken down.

Why fans across Britain will be rooting for underdogs Bradford in Sunday’s Wembley cup final date with Premier League Swansea...

Instead, the groundsman ended up shaking his pitch-fork in mock anger at the visiting supporters when they taunted him good-naturedly at half-time. Somehow, you can’t see it happening at the big Capital One occasion on Sunday.

Manager Phil Parkinson admits his team have struggled to get the League Cup date with Swansea City off their minds. Their hopes of promotion from League Two are fading after only one win in 2013 and when Wimbledon snatched a winner against them in added time on Saturday, an air of resignation seemed to accompany the praise he gave his side, who had taken the lead, but then conceded twice in the final seven minutes.

Perhaps it was just relief. After the final whistle blew, there was no more need to try to force the big date against Swansea to the back of the mind and the enjoyment could begin – at least, once the fretting about the defeat had been put out of the way on the bus journey home.

“All the teams who have done something out of the ordinary in both cups recently, such as Luton and MK Dons, have struggled in the league. Its natural, really,” said Parkinson, who has outwitted Arsene Wenger, Paul Lambert and Roberto Martinez en route to this moment in the national glare.

“It’s very difficult when there are big games ahead to lift the lads. It’s obviously on your mind. Everyone is talking about it. But it’s going to be a great day for the city of Bradford and we are going to enjoy it.”

As Parkinson spoke in the gathering gloom of south west London, the man the supporters call The City Gent was beginning his journey back to Yorkshire with the 700 or so others who had come south.

Lenny Berry, 58, is the official, unofficial club mascot, if you get the drift. This is his 52nd season following Bradford, though even he arrived far too late for their only instance of major prize-gathering, the FA Cup final win of 1911 against Newcastle.

Berry understood that there was a neat symbolism about the fact his team were playing at Wimbledon on the weekend before their Wembley trip. In the trophy cabinet at the ground, Vinnie Jones’ winner’s medal from the 1988 FA Cup final victory against Liverpool was on display.

Wimbledon, both in their non-league days and in the era of the Crazy Gang, had a reputation among the greatest cup fighters of them all. In their current guise, they are the so-called “Phoenix” club, who rose from the ashes after Wimbledon, as was, got carted off to become MK Dons.

Berry has watched Bradford in the Premier League, where they climbed, remarkably, between 1999 and 2001. He has since watched them tumble down to the bottom tier in recent times and been among those who rallied around as the club twice went into administration in the past decade and only narrowly escaped extinction.

As Wimbledon’s own mascot, 39-year-old Dean Parsons, put it, such struggles create an affinity between clubs and supporters. “The whole of League Two will be rooting for an upset next weekend,” he said.

There is another, much more stark memory which unites Bradford with the fans of every club in the land. Sixty seconds of applause are planned at Wembley in the 56th minute by City’s followers to commemorate the 56 people who died in the fire which swept their Valley Parade ground on May 11, 1985.

That was English football’s dark spring. Heysel followed two weeks later. Four years afterwards came Hillsborough. They were all pivotal events which led to the revolution in the game in Nineties. Supporters now watch games in much more comfort and safety. It is arguable, too, that the Premier League might never have come into existence but for the chain of events which began with the Bradford fire.

Berry was present that day, a member of the executive club planning to celebrate after the match against Lincoln City when the Third Division championship trophy was due to be presented.

Bradford manager Phil Parkinson wants team to relish their big moment

The Bradford fire exposed much that was wrong with the game, but it did not prompt the same prolonged acrimony and bitterness which has kept the Hillsborough tragedy at the centre of public affairs. Next Sunday, however, its memory and its emotions will throb throughout the game.

Berry recalled: “We were there to celebrate that day. Then five minutes before half-time, I got up to go into the executive club bar and saw the first smoke. Once in there I said: ‘Close the windows because someone’s let off a smoke bomb and there is a lot of it coming across.’ Then it went black outside and a wooden beam crashed down through the roof of the bar so we knew then how bad it was.

“One of the main things about it afterwards was that it brought the community together. And football began to change too because people realised what was wrong with our grounds.”

As bleak as that part of the backdrop to this cup final will be, the sheer joy of Bradford’s cup run and the trip to Wembley with a giant-killing in prospect will be a testament to the enduring power of football to lift and maintain the spirits and Parkinson is determined his players relish their moment in the spotlight.

“We know we’re not going to have loads of the ball, but we’ll have a real go and hopefully, we can do the club proud. That’s all we can do,” he said.